The day before Match Day, I wrote a guest post to Stanford's Scope Blog about my decision to pursue Family Medicine, and I'm reposting it below as my introductory post. I've been amazed by the reception in all honesty, with already 2500+ shares and growing. I think it's an indication that change is in the air. I look forward to posting more about the future of Family Medicine here. Follow me on twitter at @RayCTsai or on my personal blog where I document my personal journey towards healthy living (though I stopped posting for residency applications, but will start back up soon). Thanks!

I’m not sure why my parents were surprised when I told them that I
was applying to go into family medicine. It seemed like a logical
transition after spending six years working in public health and primary
care before medical school, but from the perspective of Taiwanese
immigrant parents, I couldn’t have made a more absurd career choice. I
was confronted with comments such as, “Most people choose careers to
make money – why aren’t you?” Even more jolting was when they asked,
“Why are you throwing away years of hard work and accomplishments?” I
was flabbergasted by the line of questioning, but they’re my parents, so
I had to answer the fundamental question – why family medicine?

For me, the answer is simple: I went into medicine to improve the
health of my community and our society, and when I think about the most
pressing health issues facing our nation, it’s preventable lifestyle
disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
more than 75 percent of our health-care costs and 7/10 of deaths stem
from chronic diseases that are largely preventable.

As a medical profession, we’ve largely been unsuccessful at getting
people to engage in healthy behaviors. Luckily that’s where family
medicine doctors are uniquely positioned to succeed. For one, the family
physician has the breadth of training to serve everyone in a community,
and in doing so, can influence community behavior as a whole. This
approach is vitally important since lifestyle choices are never made in
the clinic; they’re made in communities based on social norms set by
families and peers.

Second, as I’ve learned through my own journey of overcoming obesity
by losing 40 pounds in the past year, so much of one’s ability to
implement healthy lifestyles hinges on one’s sense of self-efficacy.
Again, that’s where the family physician comes in. A family physician
has the benefit of deep interpersonal relationships developed through
continuity of care to more effectively cheerlead and coach a patient to
success. If executed correctly, family medicine has the potential to
succeed in promoting healthy lifestyles, improving community health, and
actually preventing disease in ways we haven’t been able to before.

The potential for primary care to fix our society’s biggest
health-care problem and to have a real impact on overall population
health is why I’m choosing to go into this field. Increasingly, policy
makers are turning towards primary care to fix a health-care system
that’s becoming more expensive than we as a society can afford. As that
happens, I want to be at the front lines leading the charge and
developing impactful solutions.

When I told my parents this, their response was, “There are already a
lot of smart people who are trying to fix this problem and unable to find
an answer – so what makes you think you can?” In essence, they don’t
think I’m smart enough for family medicine. The problem that primary
care has been charged to solve is so big that my parents don’t think I
can do it.

Maybe my parents are right, but that won’t stop me from trying.
Ignoring the issue doesn’t make it any less urgent. To communicate this
to my parents, I responded with a Chinese proverb they taught me long
ago, “Plugging up your ears so you don’t hear the fire alarm doesn’t
mean there isn’t a fire.”

2 comments:

Awesome post. I'm a 4th year in Florida and will hopefully be doing an audition rotation in FM at UCLA north ridge. Im a firm believer that FAM medicine is the future as long as those who do it maintain a high level of motivation and passion for what they do. The power to empower others is amazing if done with sincerity . hope everything works out well for you

Match Day is once again upon the world of medicine, and we are eager to outline and track updates to 2012 match results for Family Medicine...

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